The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for obtaining information on service provider customers and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for tracking customer connection to a service provider using customer profiles indicating customer use patterns.
It is not uncommon for a customer of a service provider, such as an Internet service provider or a long-distance telephone service provider, to obtain and maintain multiple accounts, either simultaneously or at different periods of time. Service providers often find it desirable to match such multiple customer accounts with the single customer. This customer identification enables the service provider to ensure continuity in the type of service provided to the customer, to identify highly valued customers and/or to identify less desirable customers or customers with delinquent accounts. Traditional information, such as name and address, are usually used to perform the customer account matching. This method of account matching suffers from certain disadvantages.
More particularly, it is often difficult for the service providers to perform the account matching on their own existing data. Therefore, service providers usually provide account information to outside vendors who are paid to perform matching against their databases. Since the service providers cannot utilize existing data to perform the matching, they must incur the cost of hiring outside vendors to perform the task. In addition, it is often difficult for the outside vendors to match multiple accounts belonging to a single customer using traditional identifying information, since this information is often entered differently for each account and is subject to frequent errors in data entry. In sum, this method for customer account matching is costly, and often inaccurate.
Therefore, a method and apparatus for tracking the connection of customers of a service provider are needed which would enable the service provider to easily and accurately track customer movement or connection. The present invention was developed to accomplish these and other objectives.
In view of the foregoing, it is a principal object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus that eliminates the deficiencies of the prior art.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for accurately tracking movement and/or connection of service provider customers by accurately matching multiple accounts belonging to a single customer.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for accurately matching multiple accounts belonging to a single customer by identifying customers based upon patterns in customer use of the service.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for accurately matching multiple accounts belonging to a single customer by comparing the pattern of use of a particular account with the patterns of use for each of the remaining accounts of the service, and identifying multiple accounts as belonging to a single customer when the pattern of use for the particular account substantially matches the pattern of use of at least one of the remaining accounts.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for accurately matching multiple accounts belonging to a single customer by comparing the pattern of use of each account in a first sample of accounts being investigated with the pattern of use for each of the accounts constituting a second sample of accounts of the service provider, and determining that an account in the first sample of accounts and at least one account in the second sample of accounts belong to a single customer when the pattern of use for the account in the first sample of accounts substantially matches the pattern of use of at least one of the accounts in the second sample of customers.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for accurately matching multiple accounts belonging to a single customer by comparing the pattern of use of each of the accounts in a first sample of accounts being investigated with the patterns of use for each of the accounts constituting a second sample of accounts of the service provider, where the second sample of accounts constitutes a subset of all of the accounts of the service provider, and determining that an account in the first sample of accounts and at least one account in the second sample of accounts belong to a single customer when the pattern of use of the account substantially matches the pattern of use of at least one of the accounts in the second sample of customers.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for assigning customer history information to multiple accounts belonging to a single customer by comparing the pattern of use of a particular account of the single customer with the pattern of use for the remaining accounts, identifying multiple accounts as belonging to the single customer when the pattern of use for the particular account substantially matches the pattern of use of at least one of the remaining accounts, and assigning the customer history information of the matching remaining account(s) to the particular account.